Leaning In - Sort Of

A few weeks ago, I started a temporary part-time stint at my old job.

The offer to return was serendipitous and judging by how easily I could switch all our activities to alternative times to accommodate this opportunity (as kids' activities and classes are sold-out months in advance), I decided that it was a higher plan for me to return to my old stomping ground.

Mr. Urban, who is eternally supportive of all of my endeavors, even equipped me with an App which I can peek into our home at any time from my desk and carry on a two way conversations with our UrbanBaby and her sitter. (Incidentally, the phone sits propped up just beyond my computer screen, so I can glance over once every second... That is not obsessive, is it?)

When my phone carrier reminded me that I have used my entire monthly data plan in one day, Mr. Urban smiled as though to suggest that "the App was not meant to be used this way!!!"

The first day that I sat down for an uninterrupted four hour session at my desk in my office, I received a long love letter from my Brain.

Don't get me wrong, parenting is a job like any other job and it too can challenge your abilities in rewarding ways. You learn and grow as a person. However, the positive challenges parenting offers are more physical and spiritual in nature: learning to be energetic on very little sleep, learning to be more patient, more mindful, more understanding of a relationship where you should say Yes! most of the time (to some over the top requests might I add) and in return you get a resolute NO! dozens of times a day (to requests as mundane as Flush the Toilet Please), learning to problem solve on the micro-est of scales, learning to be more creative and fun...

Truth be told though, certain intellectual muscles in your brain do atrophy when you are Stay-At-Home mommying. Especially with little or no help. For me, anyway.

But the business of helping little Minds and Feelings and Bodies and Souls develop into healthy and well adjusted adult human beings is a full time job... and I find it takes all that I have to give and then some... I know that and I cherish that.

But for now, having four hours a day to make other differences in the world around me, having a ten minute lunch date with a book, squeezing all the baby weight I still carry into a dress, wearing pretty heals, and burying my head into a 50 page document of boring economical stats, is sexy beyond my wildest imagination!

All jokes aside, being able to work part-time at professional jobs certainly allow more moms to Lean-In and live more balanced lives...

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